unfolding the hub

The existing Braybrook Community Centre, at 107 Churchill  Avenue, Braybrook,   currently provides community meeting and activity spaces, community kitchen, public access computers, programs run by the Braybrook Men’s Shed, Maternal &  Child Health, and Community Health services delivered by the Western Region Health Centre [WRHC] and the College of Optometry. On a tight project budget and programme the proposed alterations and additions to the Community Centre will extend these existing facilities to include a new Public Library and Community Learning areas, Sports Pavilion, Early Years Centre kindergarten and occasional care, plus upgraded facilities for Maternal Child Health, Community Kitchen and Hall / Meeting areas, covering circa 4000 sqm area.

Situated in the heart of Braybrook the second most  disadvantaged  suburb  in  Victoria  -  this  new  Braybrook Community Hub project is planned to assist in redressing the local disadvantage. To deliver this plan, the new Hub needs to establish a positive connection with the hard environment. It needs to respond to community needs and even their delight / frustration, and formulate a character and trusts sufficient for the locals to claim communal ownership, but not too much as to become a foreign landmark. As equally important, the building has to promote flexibility and functionality demanded by the community. 

The design explores (social) creature-building which is happiest when it can receive an appropriate attention. As the building presence depends on community, environment to contextually registering its otherness, the redevelopment is articulated as a building in the round, welcoming and accessible on all sides both literally and metaphorically.  Unlike the existing Community Centre there is no proposed ‘back of house’ to the building to help improve park safety and minimise vandalism.

The building form is centrifugal in footprint and takes its cue from the idea of connectedness, expressed by a series of five radiating wings projecting out from lofty central volumes on all sides.  Each of the projecting wings are extensively glazed, screened by the warmth and tactility of recycled timber and glazed screens set two metres beyond the skin of the building for ease of maintenance and sun protection.   In the case of the Needle & Syringe program area (undertaken as part of early works), the screen provides a discrete point of entry.

The library facade design is complemented by a series of glazed screens strategically prescribed to correspond with the building orientation, angle of the sun, visual connection to / from reading areas, and metaphorically evoke unfolding leaves (of book) which suggest collective living and learning. The screens are carefully continued around the building provoking curiosity as to what’s existing / new and introduce peripheral transparency, scale play and a trellis landscape.

A wide, visually open and welcoming Main Entry Foyer, incorporating a social enterprise cafe and  a  generous landscaped outdoor entry  area, traverses the  width of the building linking each new and refurbished area of the building together. Landscaping design will also be enforced between the new Hub and the existing oval. Internally, high level clerestory natural light is employed as both a way-finding means and to create a sense of uplift.  Double height volumes with clerestory light are proposed to the Main Foyer, Library, Sports Pavilion, Early Years Foyer and Children’s Rooms, and the Maternal & Child Health areas.

As one can subliminally embrace emotional connection with buildings while realistically know that they are utilitarian places, the use of practical design and architectural materials can enhance this connection and assist with sense of ownership, which is particularly important for this building. Just as the architectural transformation of natural materials such as glass of wood have dynamic thought and sense provoking qualities either through the passage of time, use or erosion articulates a moment in process; the change process experienced by the locals living in the changing urban environment of Braybrook, with colourful origins and purposes, is a testament to histories compressing present and future into essential moments.  As demonstrated in  the new  Braybrook Community Hub,  everyday experience of architecture must not only be  a demand of ideas,  but  also strive for psychological space  which captures these moments.